The Jewbird by Bernard Malamud
"The Jewbird" by Bernard Malamud tells the story of a Jewish couple, Harry and Edie Cohen, and their ten-year-old son, Maurie, living in a cramped New York City apartment. The narrative begins with the family having returned home prematurely from a vacation due to Harry's ailing mother. Their mundane dinner is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of a talking blackbird that identifies itself as a "Jewbird" named Schwartz. The bird seeks refuge from those he calls "Anti-Semeets" and expresses a longing for traditional Jewish food, which creates tension with Harry, who resents Schwartz’s presence and demands he stay outside.
As the story progresses, Schwartz becomes a companion and tutor to Maurie, helping him with schoolwork and providing emotional support, while Harry grows increasingly antagonistic, leading to a series of conflicts. Schwartz's yearning for belonging contrasts sharply with Harry's frustration and bitterness. The situation escalates when Harry's harassment of Schwartz culminates in a violent confrontation, resulting in the bird being thrown out the window. The story concludes tragically, as Maurie discovers Schwartz's lifeless body in the spring, highlighting themes of alienation, cultural identity, and the complexities of familial relationships.
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The Jewbird by Bernard Malamud
First published: 1963
Type of plot: Fable
Time of work: About 1961
Locale: New York City
Principal Characters:
Harry Cohen , a Jewish frozen-foods salespersonEdie , his wifeMorris (Maurie) , their ten-year-old sonSchwartz (The Jewbird) , a talking blackbird
The Story
Harry and Edie Cohen, a lower-middle-class Jewish couple, live with their ten-year-old son, Morris (Maurie), in a small top-floor apartment on the Lower East Side of New York City. Cohen, a frozen-foods sales representative, is angry and frustrated by his relative poverty, by his dying mother in the Bronx, and by the general mediocrity of his family and his life.
When the story opens, the Cohen family is sitting down to dinner on a hot August night, their recent attempt at a vacation cut short because Harry's mother had suddenly become ill, forcing them to return to the city. While this less-than-happy family is eating, a ruffled blackbird comes flying through the open window and plops down on their table in the middle of their food. Harry curses and swats at the bird, which flutters to the top of the kitchen door and amazes them by speaking in Yiddish and English. The bird explains that he is hungry and is running (and flying) from what he calls "Anti-Semeets" (anti-Semites). He says that he is not a crow but a "Jewbird," and he demonstrates this by immediately beginning to pray passionately, a prayer Edie and Maurie join, but not Harry.
The Jewbird says that his name is Schwartz and asks for a piece of herring and some rye bread rather than the lamb chop the family is eating. Harry insists that the bird eat on the balcony, so Maurie takes him there to feed him and asks his father if the bird can stay. Harry says that Schwartz can remain only for the night but relents the next morning after Maurie cries at the prospect of losing his new friend.
The uneasy truce between Schwartz and Harry is threatened by Schwartz's requests for Jewish food and a Jewish newspaper as well as by his general garrulousness. Harry resents the bird and the fact that Schwartz calls himself Jewish. Harry makes Schwartz stay on the balcony in a wooden birdhouse even though the bird much prefers being inside with the family, where he can be warm and smell the cooking. When Harry brings home a bird feeder full of corn, Schwartz rejects it, explaining later to Edie that his digestive system has deteriorated with his old age; he prefers herring.
In the fall, Maurie returns to school and Schwartz becomes his tutor, helping him with his lessons. He becomes the boy's companion and friend, urging him to do his homework, listening and coaching while Maurie struggles with his violin, and playing dominoes with Maurie when his chores are finished. When Maurie is sick, Schwartz even reads comic books to him (although the bird dislikes comics). Maurie's school grades improve (to nothing lower than C-minus) and Edie gives Schwartz credit for the improvement, but the bird denies the suggestion that he really had anything to do with Maurie's rising academic status.
Schwartz's appearance continues to annoy Harry until one night he picks a quarrel with the bird, complaining about the way it smells and its snoring that keeps him awake. Harry curses the bird and is about to grab it when Maurie appears and the argument ends. Schwartz then avoids Harry when he can, sleeping in his birdhouse on the balcony but longing to spend more time inside with the family. Edie suggests to Schwartz that there might be some reconciliation if he would bathe as Harry wishes, but Schwartz argues that he is "too old for baths." Schwartz claims that he smells the way he does because of what he eats; he asks why Harry smells.
As winter approaches, Schwartz's rheumatism bothers him more and more; he awakens stiff, barely able to move his wings. Harry wants the Jewbird to fly off for the winter, and he begins a secret campaign of harassment. Harry puts cat food in the bird's herring and pops paper bags on the balcony at night to keep Schwartz awake. As a final stroke, he buys a cat, something Maurie has always wanted, but the cat spends its days terrorizing Schwartz. The bird suffers from all this harassment, losing feathers and becoming ever more nervous and unkempt, but somehow he endures.
The end comes on the day after Harry's ailing mother dies in her apartment in the Bronx. While Maurie and Edie are out at Maurie's violin lesson, Harry chases Schwartz with a broom. Harry grabs the bird and begins swinging it around his head; fighting for his life, Schwartz is able to bite Harry on the nose before Harry furiously pitches him out the window into the street below. Harry throws the birdhouse and feeder after him, then sits waiting with the broom, his nose throbbing painfully, for Schwartz's reappearance. The Jewbird does not return, however, and when Edie and Maurie come home Harry lies about what happened, saying that Schwartz bit him on the nose so he threw the bird out and it flew away. Edie and Maurie reluctantly accept Harry's version of the incident.
In the spring, after the snow has melted, Maurie looks for Schwartz and finds the bird's broken body in a vacant lot. "Who did it to you, Mr. Schwartz?" he cries; "Anti-Semeets," his mother tells him later.
Bibliography
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Astro, Richard, and Jackson J. Benson, eds. The Fiction of Bernard Malamud. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1977.
Avery, Evelyn, ed. The Magic Worlds of Bernard Malamud. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Bernard Malamud. New York: Chelsea House, 2000.
Davis, Philip. Experimental Essays on the Novels of Bernard Malamud: Malamud's People. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1995.
Field, Leslie A., and Joyce W. Field, eds. Bernard Malamud: A Collection of Critical Essays. Rev. ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975.
Field, Leslie A., and Joyce W. Field, eds. Bernard Malamud and the Critics. New York: New York University Press, 1970.
Nisly, L. Lamar. Impossible to Say: Representing Religious Mystery in Fiction by Malamud, Percy, Ozick, and O'Connor. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002.
Ochshorn, Kathleen. The Heart's Essential Landscape: Bernard Malamud's Hero. New York: Peter Lang, 1990.
Richman, Sidney. Bernard Malamud. Boston: Twayne, 1966.
Salzberg, Joel, ed. Critical Essays on Bernard Malamud. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987.
Sío-Castiñeira, Begoña. The Short Stories of Bernard Malamud: In Search of Jewish Post-immigrant Identity. New York: Peter Lang, 1998.